Wealthier neighbourhoods have more trees
Not surprisingly, wealthier neighbourhoods have more trees, according to an analysis by CBC News. One exception is Old Montreal, where residents tend to be wealthy but which has very few trees because of the urban geography.
Blork 12:26 on 2021-09-16 Permalink
This article seems to present this fact as some sort of mystery, or implies that somehow wealthier neighbourhoods are treated better by the TREE AUTHORITIES because of some vast conspiracy to un-tree the poor. When in fact the obvious reason is simply density (which correlates to wealth, but correlation is not causation).
Look at TMR vs. Park Ex. TMR is mostly single-family homes, with front and back yards. Those yards have space for trees, and the vast majority of those trees are on private property. Park Ex, on the other hand, is mostly apartment blocks with very little in terms of front or back yards. Most trees in Park Ex are on city property.
The same applies to Beaconsfield vs. Pierrefonds. Drop your Google Street View guy down on any street in TMR, Beaconsfield, etc. and you see trees galore, and 90% of them are on private land. Drop the guy in Park Ex and Pierrefonds and you’ll probably see about the same number of public trees, but very few private trees because there’s no space for them, and where there is space, nobody wants to pay for it.
Old Montreal is the exception in terms of wealth, but it is NOT an exception in terms of density. Old Montreal is mostly multi-unit buildings with very little in terms of front or back private yards.
Also bear in mind that trees are expensive to maintain. Landlords in poorer neighbourhoods are probably reluctant to take on the expense of planting and maintaining trees because that affects their bottom line.
As you know, I live in Longueuil, which is hardly the land o’ the rich, but my neighbourhood is as tree-filled as TMR because there is space for the trees.
And before you density warriors get your knickers in a bind, all of the above is presented as simple facts without judgement. It’s a simple fact that you cannot fit a tree and a building in the same space, and when the space is packed with housing, there’s not much room left for trees.
Blork 12:46 on 2021-09-16 Permalink
Update: Park Ex is a mix of apartment blocks and rows of triplexes. Same rules apply. Drop you Google guy on any street in Park Ex and you’ll see plenty of trees going up and down the street. But you won’t see trees between the buildings because there IS NO “between the buildings. And front/back yards are very small, with not so many trees because there isn’t much room for them.
Kate 13:15 on 2021-09-16 Permalink
Blork, I didn’t read it as quite so stridently lefty as you did. But the fact is, the wealthy have higher standards for municipal services, and in general I think would be more likely to call or email their councillors and make their request for more trees on their street known. Whereas poorer people are not likely to see their neighbourhood landscape as something they have a right to make demands about.
DeWolf 13:46 on 2021-09-16 Permalink
Kate hits on an important point here. Rather than comparing Park Ex and TMR, it’s worth comparing Park Ex and Villeray. Same built density, both developed at roughly the same time (1920-50), but Villeray is whiter, more gentrified – and much, much greener. Over the years, the city has invested more in trees, along with other public infrastructure, whereas in Park Ex there are many streets with narrow sidewalks and no street trees at all.
A big thing these days is building saillies de trottoirs (corner bulb-outs) which can add tons of greenery to a street while also improving pedestrian safety. Park Ex has very few of these whereas Villeray has plenty. Same borough, different standards.
Blork 14:41 on 2021-09-16 Permalink
Kate, you’re missing my point. TMR and similar places don’t have more trees because the residents asked for it; they have more trees because they have more privately-held space, and that space tends to have more trees.
To DeWolf’s point: compare the Plateau to Mercier. Plateau is much wealthier, but Mercier has way more trees, for the simple reason that Mercier is less dense, has more single-family houses, and therefore more front and back yards with trees.
My point is simply that it is way more about density (and the associated style of buildings and the amount of land between them) than it is about wealth. If you just survey TREES ON MUNICIPAL LAND you will probably not find much difference.
mare 15:20 on 2021-09-16 Permalink
I live in a dense neighbourhood (Petite-Patrie) and I’m currently sitting under a large ash tree that is still doing okay after two treatments against the emerald ash borer. Before the ash we had a big maple, and we have three more trees in our yard to take over when the ash has to be cut down. Planting the maple was cheap, but cutting it down when it got sick was expensive. $100 for a permit and $1500 for arborists to cut it down and turn it into firewood and mulch. They couldn’t remove the stump because the stump cutter couldn’t access the site without demolishing half the garden. So we now have a elevated rock garden over the stump.
When I look at the quite big back gardens of the other 2 and 3 stories buildings on our alleyway I see only a few gardens with trees. Most have just a patch of grass (and three have swimming pools!) and then a tarmac area that fits as many cars as possible. One building has six cars and a huge Tempo in the winter, no idea how they manage the access of the double row of cars.
In the front of the building we have large trees on city property that are very nice, despite being mercilessly trimmed by Hydro-Québec. We’re lucky to have a variety of trees, unlike some adjacent streets where almost all the trees are ash trees that are sick and dying 🙁
Blork 15:34 on 2021-09-16 Permalink
Mare, you live on one of the most lush streets in your borough, with largeish back yards and wide swaths of public land between the sidewalk and the street. Very unusual for the dense neighbourhoods of Montreal. You can’t compare your street to any street in Park Ex. So your neighbourhood has a lot of density in one direction (side by side) but not so much in the other (front and back). The neighbourhoods in Park Ex tend to be dense in both directions, so there simply isn’t room for all those trees.
DeWolf makes a good point in that places like Villeray have invested more in public greenery, but as he also mentions, Park Ex has more streets with narrow sidewalks and apartment blocks, so there simply isn’t space along those streets for trees. There are certainly some nooks and crannies and corners and whatnot that could be greened up, but overall the layout and bidirectional density is different.
Drop your Google guy down in SIMILAR STYLE streets in Park Ex and Villeray and you don’t see much difference. E.g., Querbes just below Saint-Roch in Park Ex and Drolet near Gounod in Villeray. Not a huge difference. You do find some streets in Villeray with more lush greenery, but they’re almost always streets where there’s a bit of a front yard in front of the triplexes, so there’s more room for trees (and those trees are most likely on private land). E.g., Saint-Gérard. Villeray also has pockets of single-family houses, where there are front and back yards as well as space between the houses, which means more room for trees.
Joey 15:47 on 2021-09-16 Permalink
This assessment could really benefit from some slightly-more-advanced stastical analysis. “Nicer neighbourhoods have more trees” is hardly a news story, nor is the half-assed (quarter-assed?) attempt to imply causation – CBC contends that wealthier neighbourhoods have more (and more diverse) trees, but it’s plausible that areas that have always had better vegetation have grown wealthier over time. I would imagine a fourth-year stats student could do some quick multivariable analysis to examine what factors are really determinative once you account for various demographic data (income, neighbourhood development age, density, etc.).
Perhaps a more interesting piece would compare where the city/boroughs have invested in trees, curb extensions, street furniture (looking at you, area in front of Kem Coba), etc., with areas that lack adequate tree coverage. My hunch is that event recently, spending flows toward the wealthier neighbourhoods that need the least – even if you recognize that making Park-Ex greener is a lot harder than greening alleys in Mile-End.
Blork 17:13 on 2021-09-16 Permalink
BTW, Kate; funny, I wasn’t even thinking “stridently lefty.” I recoiled against the sense that stories like this always need to find a boogeyman, and that boogeyman is usually “the wealthy.” (Although to be fair, the boogeyman often is “the wealthy.” I just don’t think that’s the case here.)
Kate 17:39 on 2021-09-16 Permalink
Blork, funny you should compare Park Ex and Villeray in that way, because my section of Villeray, the quadrilateral between St-Laurent and St-Hubert, Cremazie and Jean-Talon, is pretty thickly treed on the street. This whole area has back alleys, and they’re less solidly planted, partly because (as has already been observed) yards tend to be small, and some are paved, or partly paved. But I walked this neighbourhood a lot for the census and was agreeably surprised at how well shaded most of the streets are.
Park Ex is very different – its streets tend to be on the stark side.
Blork 21:00 on 2021-09-16 Permalink
No doubt Park Ex and Villeray are are different, despite the similarities that DeWolf points out. My point is that you can’t compare the most-treed street in Villeray with the least-treed street in Park Ex because you’ll most likely find that those streets are built differently. You need to compare streets that are built similarly in terms of building size, distance from the sidewalk, etc.
The other thing to keep in mind is we probably have more trees in the city now than in any time in its modern history. Look at any photograph from the 1920s or the 1940s or even the 1980s in any neighbourhood in the city. Then look up that location now in Google Street View. We’re practically living in a jungle now as compared with any time in the past 100 years.
Kate 22:01 on 2021-09-16 Permalink
Blork, you’re right about that. We’ve come to value the shadiness of a well treed street more than our parents or grandparents did.
Orr 14:29 on 2021-09-18 Permalink
If you are interested in Montreal’s public trees, the Arbres publics de Montréal interactive website is very interesting.
https://www.quebio.ca/fr/arbresmtl